


Lessons

by SylvanWitch



Category: The Man From U.N.C.L.E. (2015)
Genre: F/M, Hurt/Comfort, Implied/Referenced Rape/Non-con, Implied/Referenced Torture, M/M, Slow Build
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-27
Updated: 2016-02-27
Packaged: 2018-05-23 11:16:43
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,219
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6114820
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SylvanWitch/pseuds/SylvanWitch
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When it comes to figuring out Napoleon Solo, it is Illya who is the terrible spy.  Fortunately, he gets better.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Lessons

**Author's Note:**

  * Translation into 中文 available: [Lessons](https://archiveofourown.org/works/8006464) by [adaemmait](https://archiveofourown.org/users/adaemmait/pseuds/adaemmait)



> The rape and torture occur off-stage, but the effects of both are described in graphic detail. There are also references to the symptoms of PTSD. For a while, this is not a very happy story, but it does have an upbeat ending.
> 
> The epigram and section breaks in bold are quotes from _The Man from U.N.C.L.E._ (2015).

**_I do wonder if it was your father's shame that gave you such drive, though.  Or was it your mother's reputation?  I understand that she was extremely popular amongst your father's friends after he was shipped off to Siberia._ **

 

In the three months they’d been a team, Illya had learned a few things about Solo.

 

First, he was not nearly as glib as he wished he were.

 

Second, when he was tired, he wore his charm like a robe that had grown thin with wear, so that Illya caught glimpses of Solo’s true nature naked through the scant cover.

 

Third, what Solo cared for, he pretended to neglect, but always there were little betrayals, such as the time he’d carried Gaby up three flights of stairs after she’d been caught in a downpour and twisted her ankle in a drain.  Or when Illya had required stitches that he could easily have done himself, but Solo had insisted on doing it, claiming that Illya’s hands weren’t steady enough, which was a patent lie.

 

But despite that Illya had come to know Solo to a certain degree and maybe even to like him a little, he still didn’t trust him.

 

So when a simple mission went terribly wrong because Solo couldn’t keep his trousers zipped, Illya wasted no time shoving him against the wall of their hotel suite and laying a forearm across his throat.  Gaby was out for the evening, Illya having offered to back up Solo on what was to have been a simple fact-finding mission.  Naturally, Solo had complicated things.

 

As Solo’s face turned red, Illya spoke with a seething calm that did nothing to ease the tension between them.

 

“Do you think you could for even a few hours remember your primary mission, Cowboy?  Is it so hard for you to resist your base urges for the time it would take you to complete the objective?”

 

Solo tried a smile, but it rapidly morphed to a grimace as Illya increased the pressure across his windpipe, deliberately preventing him from answering.

 

This close, Illya could smell the cloying sweetness of the woman’s perfume on Solo’s skin.  It turned his stomach.

 

“You smell like a whore,” Illya said, abruptly backing away, releasing his partner as if he couldn’t stand to be contaminated by Solo’s touch for another moment.

 

Instead of moving to the sideboard for a drink, as Illya had expected, Solo remained against the wall, hands hanging loose at his sides, broken grin not quite making it to his eyes.

 

Even from six feet away, Illya could see the angry impression he’d left on the other man’s throat, but Solo did nothing to ease the redness, though he did clear his throat, a dry, ratcheting sound that grated on Illya’s nerves.

 

Although silence was his best weapon, one he’d used to effect a thousand times in this life, Illya found himself hating the quiet, waiting with increasing impatience for Solo to say something biting about Illya’s mother and even the score between them.

 

But Solo didn’t even acknowledge, much less answer, Illya’s insult, and at last Illya turned away with a snort of disgust and moved toward the balcony that overlooked the crowded, noisy street below.

 

“I’m sorry,” drifted across the space between them, almost drowned out by the honking of car horns that reached him even through the heavy glass doors.

 

Illya’s shoulders tensed as if for a blow, and he waited for the punchline, the part where Solo defended his behavior or deflected its consequences.

 

When nothing followed, he turned back to see that Solo had crossed the floor of the living area and was standing at the far end of the low coffee table.  His hands, usually so expressive, were still loose at his sides, like he feared that he might incite further violence if he used them.

 

Illya suddenly regretted having pushed Solo, having come close to throttling him out of anger.

 

For all that Solo suffered from temptations of the flesh, Illya himself struggled to resist his own powerful urges.

 

“I didn’t mean…” Solo went on, voice thin and reedy, and Illya tsked with impatience, overcome with an unfamiliar guilt as he stalked to the sideboard and poured Solo a drink, holding it out like a peace offering as he stopped at the other end of the coffee table, its glass top casting up a wavering reflection of the gesture.

 

Solo took the glass and downed its contents with a single long, stuttering swallow, and when it was empty, he held it cupped in both hands and stared at the trace of amber left in the bottom like he was trying to divine his future from it.

 

When he looked up at Illya at last, there was something feral in his expression, like a cornered animal making its final, futile attempt to survive.

 

“I didn’t know the husband would be back.”

 

This was Solo’s usual line, and Illya was startled by the strength of disappointment that flooded through him to hear it.  Why he’d expected anything else out of Solo was beyond him.  He wasn’t an animal who could change his spots, even if he were so inclined, which he apparently was not.

 

Illya felt his face stiffening into an expression of disapproval, and Solo must have seen it too, for he hurried on, stumbling over his words, all grace gone.

 

“I didn’t do it for –for the sex.  I did it because I thought she might know something, that I might get her to talk about her husband’s work.  She made some remarks at dinner that led me to think she knew more than we’d been led to believe, that she might be involved, even, in her husband’s little side business with the arms dealer.  I think Waverly’s intel might have been incomplete, or maybe someone fed him a line—I don’t know.  All I do know is that Mirabella Sabotini is more than she appears.”

 

Though Solo’s handsome face had returned to a more characteristic expression of savoir faire, his tone of voice belied the mask:  He desperately wanted Illya to believe him.  No, that wasn’t it.  It almost looked like he wanted Illya to believe _in_ him.  But that was ridiculous:  Solo was aptly named.  He preferred his own company and his own methods.  He didn’t care about anyone else’s approval. 

 

Frustrated by his own failing—he was not so good with understanding people’s “feelings”—Illya merely waved a dismissive hand before saying, “Still, you should have come to us, your _team_.”  He put special emphasis on the word.  “Perhaps Gaby could have befriended the Sabotini woman, or maybe Waverly had some information that might have given us a way in.  Your way is not always the best, Cowboy.  You do not always have to crawl into bed with them.”

 

He was surprised at the bitterness that had crept into his voice at the end there but even more surprised by the expression that flickered across Solo’s face, there and then gone—hurt, Illya thought it was, genuine hurt—just before Solo slid back into something more comfortable for the both of them—a condescending smirk that telegraphed the next words out of his mouth.

 

“We have a saying in America, Peril:  If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.  A maxim I think your mother would agree with in this case.”

 

Illya clenched his hands reflexively and took in a long breath, trying to drive back the red mist that threatened to blind him.

 

Solo laughed, a raspy croak of derision, before dropping the empty whiskey glass on the table.  It made a sharp sound like a gavel falling, and then he was turning away, showing Illya his back, taunting him, almost inviting an assault, saying, _I’m not afraid of you_.

 

But with a blinding insight, strong enough to drive away his instinctual anger, Illya understood that, in fact, Solo was afraid of Illya—not of Illya’s hands, not of the strength of them, not even of the red mist that made him into a monster.

 

He was afraid that Illya might _disapprove_ of him.  And that was an interesting revelation, a fourth thing Illya had learned. 

 

 

**_Is better for the mission that we get to know each other little bit more intimately._ **

 

The kiss was disappointing.

 

Solo’s mouth tasted of stale whiskey and the heinous Turkish cigarettes he insisted on smoking when in bars and clubs like this one.

 

He insinuated his tongue into Illya’s mouth, taking command of the kiss, and Illya focused on the sounds around them, filtering out the pounding bass rhythm of the onstage band and sliding past the hyena laughter of the drunk women at the next table, who’d apparently caught sight of their embrace.

 

He thought he heard footsteps approaching, a hurried, purposeful tread, so he tilted his head and relaxed his jaw, signaling a convincing surrender for the mark who, if Illya was not mistaken, was about to descend on them in a phobic rage.

 

As that had been the point of their little exercise, he was nothing but relieved when someone yanked them apart.  Illya opened his eyes to see the mark standing over them, having just pulled Solo backwards and almost off of his chair.

 

“Queers aren’t allowed in my club,” Jorge Almovodar growled, gripping Solo by the lapels and hauling him up off of the seat.  “Get out!” he shouted, throwing Solo toward the rear exit.

 

As planned, Solo pretended fear, holding up both hands and tripping over his feet in his haste to be gone from the room.  To everyone there, it appeared as though he’d abandoned his companion to the tender ministrations of Almovodar’s bouncers, who had moved up to flank their boss and were giving Illya identical looks of vicious delight.

 

Illya smiled back, letting a little of the shark into his eyes, flat and devoid of conscience, as he heaved up from his seat, overturning the table to come out swinging.

 

He had to give a good show to distract Almovodar, his bouncers, the guards at the rear exit, the bartender and patrons, long enough to give Solo a chance to slip upstairs to the office and complete his part of the mission.

 

Tasting Solo in his mouth, Illya let the violence overtake him, roaring with sheer joy in the destruction, the familiar feeling driving out any lingering sense he may have had of the weight of Solo’s hand splayed on his thigh beneath the table or the soft sound he’d made, felt more than heard, when Illya had surprised him by giving in to the kiss.

 

**_Is this what you call sleeping on it?_ **

 

In six months they’d managed to establish a kind of working détente.  Gaby would curb her sharp tongue, Illya his notorious temper, Solo his infamous libido, and they would all avoid pressing each other’s tenderer buttons.

 

If Illya sometimes came in from reconnaissance to find Gaby wrapped casually in Solo’s arms, their legs stretched out on the sofa and a bowl of shared popcorn balanced precariously in Gaby’s lap, well, that’s what friends did, he thought, though as for that, he had no direct experience in the matter himself.

 

They invariably invited him to sit with them, Gaby with warmth in her gaze, Solo with challenge.  They’d pull their feet up to leave him room at the end, offer him the bowl and nod at the screen, where some black and white movie was inevitably playing.

 

And once in a great while, Illya was tempted to join them, but he never did.

 

One night, he came in from the skin-chapping cold of Oslo in January to find Gaby and Solo kissing.  She’d half-turned in his lap, spilling popcorn on the floor beneath the coffee table and down the back of the couch cushions, and Illya was first only irritated at the mess and the possibility that the butter would stain the pale satin fabric of the cushions, and then he was caught by the flush on Solo’s cheeks and the way one hand clutched restlessly at Gaby’s waist, as if unsure whether to bring her closer or push her away.

 

He wasn’t sure what he felt, and never good at cataloguing the more complex emotions, he settled for his first emotion, swallowing down a ridiculous hurt that made his chest tight and his stomach cold. 

 

Deciding that discretion was the better part of valor—and that he didn’t have the energy for the awkward conversation that would follow if he revealed that he’d seen them kissing—Illya went back down the suite’s short entryway to the door and opened it again, closing it this time with a deliberate bang that announced his arrival.

 

When he came again into the living room, Gaby was on her knees beside the couch, scooping up handfuls of popcorn, a rueful expression on her somewhat red face. 

 

“I’m such a clutz,” Gaby said, looking up at him.  “Can you believe I jumped at a scary part and dropped the bowl?”

 

Illya could _not_ believe it, in point of fact:  Gaby was fearless.  Everyone knew that.  But he gave her an out with a smile and a nod and came around the end of the couch to crouch beside her and help her pick up the last few kernels. 

 

Solo, still stretched out on the couch, ankles crossed and hands folded innocently in his lap, smiled at Illya.

 

“Everything alright with your patrol?”  (Illya insisted on a perimeter scan every night before they went to sleep.)

 

Illya nodded.  “Fine.  There was nothing to see.”

 

“Good, good,” Solo answered, betraying his aplomb by licking his lips, which were redder than usual and still damp from the kiss.

 

Illya ignored the treacherous hurt that threatened once more to swamp him, and offered Solo an indifferent smile as he rose and moved toward his bedroom door.

 

“Good night,” he said with his usual brusqueness, closing his partners out. 

 

 

**_The thing is I work better alone._ **

****

**_I work better alone too._ **

****

**_I'm not leaving._ **

 

Illya’s first thought on at last tracking Solo down was that he was glad Gaby wasn’t there.  She’d protested vociferously that they were a team and she should be allowed to join them, but Waverly had stood firm in pointing out that bringing a woman to Afghanistan for a covert mountain mission was reckless, bordering on suicidal.

 

She had given in gracelessly and pouted through their farewells—cool for Illya, who’d firmly agreed with their employer; warmer for Solo, who’d promised to bring her back an exotic scarf.

 

There was nothing remotely exotic about where they were now:  A damp, chill cave high in the Hindu Kush.  As observant and well-trained as Illya was, he couldn’t have told anyone whether they were still in Afghanistan or had strayed over the border, not even under pain of torture.

 

He suspected that the captors who had taken Solo had been asking him far more difficult questions than that.

 

Solo was bound by the wrists and suspended from a rough wooden beam that in part supported the ceiling.  His toes just brushed the ground, and he’d have been hard pressed to relieve the immense and painful pressure on his shoulders even were he conscious.  As it was, Solo was apparently out of it, head hanging and toes scraping the floor as he swayed with the motion his ribcage made while his body struggled for breath.

 

He was clad only in a filthy pair of loose pants.  They must once have been white but were now stained with dried blood, urine, and other fluids Illya refused to identify.  The pants were fastened at the waist by a rough herder’s rope, and as he considered contingencies for getting Solo to safety should he be unable to arouse the other man, Illya’s eyes fixed on the angry red abrasion that ringed Solo’s waist where the rope had rubbed him raw.

 

“Solo,” he hissed as he reached for the man’s flank to steady his swaying.  “Solo,” he whispered again, this time directly into his partner’s ear.

 

Solo’s head came up, and he jerked against the ropes, sucking in a pained breath with a choking gasp that left him panting.  He struggled to get his feet under him, frantic and desperate, and Illya said, “Cowboy,” a little louder to try to be heard over Solo’s panicked noises.

 

Something got through.  Solo stilled, turned his face to his partner, squinted through the single eye that hadn’t been beaten shut.

 

His lips were cracked, one corner seeping blood, and the entire left side of his face was swollen, with a blue knot on the jaw and a wicked cut along his cheekbone beneath the closed eye.

 

He tried to speak, lips opening and a thin wheeze coming out that might have been “Peril?” but Illya hushed him with a gesture, a gentle brush of his finger against the least damaged part of Solo’s right cheek.

 

Moving slowly, he telegraphed his intention of wrapping one arm around Solo’s waist so that he could lift the man’s wrists free of the hook overhead.

 

Solo swallowed a moan, his breath bursting ragged and harsh against Illya’s ear as Illya took his weight, and Illya felt Solo shudder, felt his chest convulse as his feet touched the floor and his arms flopped uselessly over Illya’s shoulders.

 

It was clear that Solo couldn’t stand on his own, much less walk, and though there was great urgency in their need to escape from the cave, Illya paused to lower Solo against the wall of the cave and work on getting his hands free.  Once that was done, Illya offered him his canteen, cautioning him to take small sips.

 

Even with Illya guiding the action, water dribbled down Solo’s chin and the cut at the corner of his lip broke open, adding a brighter stream of blood to the filth on his face.

 

Basic needs tended, Illya massaged Solo’s ravaged wrists as gently as he could and cupped his hands around the swollen points of his shoulders, trying to ease some feeling back into the other man’s arms.

 

Solo allowed the intimacies, body held stiffly, face averted, only his occasional caught breath indicating the pain he was in as blood rushed back into his cramped extremities.

 

That done, Illya ran his hands clinically down Solo’s torso, numbering his ribs and feeling for fractures, and then moved to his legs.

 

Solo made a sound of protest and tried to shift from beneath Illya’s probing fingers, and it was the tenor of the sound more than the broken words that got his attention, for Solo sounded like he was pleading with Illya to stop.

 

“I’m fine,” he slurred.  “Let’s go.”

 

Illya ignored him, intent on finishing the triage, and Solo said, “Please, Illya.”

 

It was the use of his given name more than the despairing tone in which Solo said it that convinced Illya to abide by his partner’s wishes.  In the nine months they’d been a team, Solo had rarely used Illya’s name, wielding instead the nickname he’d given him, sometimes in jest but often fondly.  Illya had come to find that he did not mind being Solo’s “Peril.”

 

“Can you walk now?”  Illya surveyed Solo’s condition critically.  He did not think his partner would get far, but he’d been surprised before by his unexpected store of strength and his immense and implacable will.

 

Solo nodded painfully and tried to ease himself up using the wall for support.  He didn’t get far before Illya had to intervene, taking him beneath the arms and helping him find his footing.

 

Solo winced, undamaged eye fluttering shut as he internalized his agony.  Then he opened his eye again, dragged in a shuddering breath, and gestured weakly with one dirty hand.

 

“After you.”

 

It wasn’t until they emerged into the seeping grey twilight of an early spring sunset in the high mountains that Illya got a good look at Solo’s back, which was marred by further cuts and bruises.  More troubling were the tacky brown stains on the seat of his loose trousers and the way Solo was holding himself rigidly, one arm over his abdomen, like he was trying to keep his insides from coming loose.

 

The ferocity of his rage as understanding broke over him made Illya stop suddenly and suck in a harsh breath, a red wash coloring the world around him as he clenched his fists and began counting parts, disassembling and reassembling a machine gun in his head until he could once again open his eyes and see the world without the blood-tint fouling the air.

 

Solo was staring at him stoically, chin up and eyes pinned to the horizon over Illya’s left shoulder.

 

“It’s alright,” Solo insisted.  “I’m fine.  Keep moving.  Night is coming.”

 

Every word was bought with pain, the muscles on the undamaged half of his jaw tensing and jumping as he slurred around his swollen tongue, and Illya felt a swell of immense pride and uncharacteristic tenderness at his partner’s courage.

 

That pride turned to distress as Solo took a step, stumbled over a rock in his path, and bit a groan off with his teeth as he righted himself with terrible effort.

 

“We need to find shelter,” Illya said, shrugging out of his jacket and draping it over Solo’s hunched shoulders.  It was cold with the coming of evening, and Solo was already trembling.  Without preamble, Illya got a shoulder under Solo’s armpit to take some of the weight off of his bare feet and help him walk. “Once we’re out of sight of the cave, I’ll signal for extraction.  You can’t climb down the mountain with no shoes and no shirt.”

 

Solo grimaced in what might have been a sad attempt at a smirk.  “No, this is a _fine_ dining establishment,” he might have said, and Illya didn’t know if it was meant as a joke or was merely the first signs of fever.

 

Dark had spread like a blindfold over the mountain when Illya felt it was safe for them to go to ground.  He’d paused only long enough to signal his local contact with their location and request through him an emergency extraction team.  The news that it would be dawn before a helicopter could reach them did nothing to ease Illya’s worry.

 

Solo had grown weaker on their downhill trek, so that when they stopped at last, Illya was practically carrying him.  As best he could in the muffling darkness, Illya searched for a clear spot of ground near a boulder and lowered Solo until he was sitting up with his back to the rock. 

 

“I need to find shelter,” Illya said before moving away, only Solo’s faint, “Okay,” indicating that he was still conscious.

 

There were no caves in this part of the mountain, and it was just as well, since undoubtedly any cave here would be connected to the network further up.  The last thing they needed was the enemy coming upon them in Solo’s weakened state.  What he did find was a roughly triangular gap in the rock face where millennia ago some cataclysm had sheared away a narrow fillet, leaving a space six feet wide at the base, tapering to a foot-wide skylight perhaps twelve feet up.  It would be a tight fit and certainly uncomfortable, but it would afford them some cover from the damp and cold.

 

As it turned out, the restriction of the space worked in Illya’s favor, for he needed no excuse to lend Solo his warmth, pulling him against his side and wrapping both arms around him. 

 

Solo’s skin was clammy and cool beneath Illya’s searching touch, his breathing shallow and irregular.  Though he could just make out a sliver of light where Solo’s one good eye must be open, he could tell by the bone-shaking shivers that Solo was going into shock.

 

As gently as he could, he maneuvered Solo until he was resting between his outstretched legs, his back to Illya’s front, Illya’s arms around him.  At first, Solo was stiff in his embrace, his face averted, but he relaxed by slow increments as heat transferred between them.  Eventually, he let his head fall back against Illya’s shoulder, his breath a reassuring warmth along Illya’s cheek.

 

“How did you find me?” Solo rasped, and Illya obliged him with the story of warlords and Russian guns, making it sound far simpler and significantly less dangerous than it had actually been.  As he finished his tale, Illya realized that Solo was asleep, the rise and fall of his chest a steady promise beneath his arms.  He gave himself a moment to rest his chin on Solo’s shoulder and release a long, shuddering breath.

 

Throughout the long night, wounded noises and flinching broke Solo’s sleep, but each time, Illya murmured soft Russian endearments against his temple and tightened his hold until his partner slipped back into the dark waters of sleep. Only when the thrum of rotors in the distance alerted him to the time did Illya surrender his hold, rousing Solo and helping him up, doing him the kindness of ignoring the small, pained sounds Solo couldn’t keep behind his teeth as he tried to stand on his own.

 

Illya gave him the illusion of privacy as he steadied Solo while the man relieved himself, and then he half-carried him the short distance to the landing zone.

 

Once in the chopper, Solo kept to himself, jaw clenched, lips white with the effort of not betraying his pain to the soldier manning the fifty caliber mounted in one of the Huey’s doors.  Illya sat beside him, hands to himself, and distracted himself from what Solo was suffering by calculating wind velocity and distance to target for unseen snipers in the shadows of the mountains that they passed.

 

They landed in Islamabad, where a British ambulance and medical team were waiting for them.  As Illya supported his partner across the rotor-washed tarmac, Solo gripped his forearm, signaling that he needed to stop.

 

Leaning close, Solo said, “Don’t say anything about it,” and Illya nodded, meeting Solo’s eyes for a moment before Solo looked away, pale cheeks suddenly coloring a blotchy, hectic red.

 

Privately, Illya thought that the doctors here would have to be terrible at their jobs not to understand at once the kind of abuse to which his partner had been subjected, but it was not his place to say anything.  Instead, he resumed their slow walk toward the waiting ambulance, taking more of Solo’s weight as the accumulation of outrage and grief finally got the better of him and he collapsed onto the stretcher with a stifled groan.

 

Later, in the hospital, Illya would lie to the nurse in charge of the intake forms and to the doctor who came to see him with questions he could not answer without violating the Secrecy Act and at last to Gaby, whose tight, unhappy voice came back to him thin and distant from the apartment in London that they shared.

 

Finally, he lied to Solo himself when he said, “You know it doesn’t mean anything.  You are as you have always been to me.”

 

In fact, Illya had learned somewhere in the blackness of an Afghani night that many things mattered to him and most of those things came back to the man lying beaten and wretched in the starched white sheets of a hospital bed in Pakistan. 

 

  
_**Absolutely hated working with you, Peril.**_  
  
_**You're a terrible spy, Cowboy.**_

 

The thing is, Napolean Solo may not be a better spy than Illya, but he is a consummate artist with the con, long or short, and if Illya had learned nothing else in the last year, he had learned to distrust when his partner seemed most at ease.

 

One of two things are inevitably true if Napolean was smiling like the proverbial canary-eating cat:

 

He had just stolen something exquisite, whether that’s a jewel, a painting, or someone’s spouse.

 

Or he was deflecting attention from a sore spot, fixing the other party’s interest on his white teeth, perfect hair, and exceptional…physical fitness.

 

Since Illya has had regular occasion to see all three of those things in a private and less impressive context, he was no longer fooled into looking at what Solo was willing to show.

 

Now he looked at what his partner was hiding behind the dazzling display.

 

And what he was seeing through his sniper’s scope made him deeply uneasy:  Solo, legs crossed, posture relaxed, a certain insouciance in the way he canted his hips, one hand idly toying with a teaspoon, the other resting palm-up on the table, as if inviting the knockout blonde across from it to reach out and touch him.

 

Except he quite clearly did not want to be touched.  As her hand drifted across the white linen, the movement of the teaspoon grew frenetic, sun caught in the silver bowl flashing sunlight into Illya’s eyes, a desperate, nonsensical Morse code that sent only a single, repeated message:  No.

 

Illya bit back a curse and then set his rifle aside in favor of the radio, which he squawked twice long and then three times short, his signal for Gaby to pick up on their private channel.

 

“You noticed,” she said, and it was not a question.  Her voice was devoid of expression through the static, but Illya knew she was worried.

 

“We must abort.”

 

“No,” Gaby answered, her voice a little clearer, a little sharper now.  “He needs this, Illya.  We have to let him have this.”

 

Illya disagreed, but he could not say why, not aloud, not to Gaby, who had been spending more of her nights in Solo’s room than in her own.  He had tried not to be jealous of her and told himself that it was for the best that Solo had resumed his old routines after the weeks of physical healing and months of stoic silence alternating with manic bouts of excess that had followed.

 

And then Illya hated himself a little for thinking of Gaby in those terms, as though she were just another box on a checklist Medical had given him to keep track of Solo’s recovery.  Gaby deserved better.  She _was_ better.

 

It was Illya who was not right.  Not _better_.  Though looking at Solo once more through the scope, Illya believed that his partner was not truly better either, despite Medical and Waverly both having cleared Solo for a return to full field service.

  
Whatever comfort Gaby had been offering at night was apparently not enough to make Solo feel at home with a stranger’s touch.

 

He was going to blow the mission.

 

The spoon made blinding signs against the glass of his scope, and Illya winced and pulled his eye away. When he resumed his surveillance, he saw something unexpected:  Gaby, wide-brimmed, fashionable hat tilted rakishly, snug dress and sun-struck jewels capturing eyes across the patio where Solo and the mark sat.  She made her show-stopping way across the space, and Illya could imagine the punctuation of her heels on the flagstones and noticed that Solo’s hand had stilled on the spoon.

 

He saw the moment the mark took in Gaby’s trajectory:  The blonde stiffened and sat back in her seat, the threatening hand sliding off the table and landing demurely in her lap as Gaby threw an enthusiastic arm around Solo’s neck and planted a kiss on his cheek.

 

A few minutes later, a plate arrived for Gaby, and moments after that, Solo seemed to be making his regrets and rising from the table, dropping his napkin with one hand and several large bills with the other, and Gaby was laughing, head tilted close to the mark’s, obscuring their faces from Illya’s scope by the span of Gaby’s great hat.

 

Three short squawks, three long, and Illya was listening to Solo’s clipped, “Was this your doing?”

 

“Negative,” Illya answered, though it would perhaps have been more truthful to say otherwise.  He was relieved that Gaby had made an impromptu change to the mission specs, and from what he could tell through the rifle scope, she was already making great friends with the mark.

 

“Keep on them.”

 

“Of course,” and then there was dead air between them.

 

If Solo had intended to punish Illya for his perceived loss of faith, he couldn’t have devised a more nefarious revenge than forcing Illya to follow Gaby and the mark, whose name was Natalia Miranov, as they descended upon the exclusive boutiques and shops that lined both sides of the street on which they had met.  They accumulated bags and admiring stares in equal numbers and seemed to have an impossible store of energy.

 

Laughing, scattering tips and winks behind them, leaving in their wake breathless young men with gaping mouths, the two beauties shopped late into the afternoon, only breaking once, for an espresso and a shared pastry, before resuming their focused effort to bankrupt U.N.C.L.E., on Gaby’s part, and Miranov’s husband, a Russian émigré with ties to the Italian Mafiosi, on Natalia’s.

 

At last, as the stars were beginning to brighten in a deep blue sky overhead, Gaby signaled that she needed direct contact, and Illya met her in the ladies’ room at the back of the trattoria where the women had stopped to dine.

 

“Have you heard from Napoleon?” were the first words out of Gaby’s mouth once she had locked the door against interruptions.

 

Illya shook his head.

 

“He should have spelled you by now.”  In the quiet privacy of the small, perfumed room, her face looked tired, a pinched whiteness around her lips that indicated her worry over their partner.

“He is sulking,” Illya insisted, though he didn’t really believe it, and they both knew it.

 

“Look, I can handle Natalia.  We’re to have drinks at d’Medici’s and then she’s invited me back to the penthouse suite for a swim.  I can plant the bugs then, and you can monitor me that way.  Go find Napoleon.”

 

Illya hated the idea of abandoning Gaby, even for a short time, and his imminent refusal must have shown on his face.

 

“He needs you,” she said, and he privately thought that it was Gaby Solo needed, not Illya.

 

This, too, must have reached his expression, for Gaby tsked impatiently and shook her head and then slapped him on the chest with her open palm.

 

“Gah!  Men!  How can you be so stupid?”

 

Baffled, Illya rubbed his stinging chest absently and said, “I do not understand?”

 

“It’s not _my_ assurance Napoleon needs.  He needs for you to show him that nothing’s changed for you, that he’s the same as he has always been.”

 

Illya shrugged helplessly, far beyond his depth and sinking fast.

 

“Nothing has changed.  He is my partner. . .and friend.”  The last he added only reluctantly as Gaby’s glare transformed from merely irritated into truly incendiary.

 

This earned him another, harder slap, and he recoiled a little, bumping up against the sink as he retreated from her fury.  He held up both hands, palms forward, in a show of surrender, and she huffed loudly and rolled her eyes.

 

“Napoleon loves you.”  She enunciated the words with crisp precision, pausing between each to let them sink in.

 

“I do not think so,” he said then, helpless to keep the bitter disbelief from coloring his tone.  He had spent weeks wanting to help, only to be rebuffed by closed doors, his partners’ voices reduced to soft murmurs and then a telling silence behind them.

 

“What do you think we’ve been talking about all those nights?”

 

Illya snorted, that single, inelegant sound saying quite clearly that he didn’t think they’d been doing much _talking_ at all.

 

He was ready for her this time and captured her wrist before she could land another blow. 

 

“Stop.  I do not know why you will be cruel this way to me, but I do not believe you.”

 

It was the wrong thing to say, and he knew it as soon as the last word had died in the suddenly fraught air between them.  Gaby wrenched her arm from his grip, and her face transformed with a series of emotions too complex and swift for him to capture, even had he been good at reading such things.

 

He felt helpless, like a child again, watching the grown-ups in his life make decisions for him that he could not comprehend and certainly could not control.

 

In a voice gone low and cold, Gaby said, “I am sorry that your terrible excuse for a childhood has made you into this person who cannot feel or understanding feelings.  I’m sorry your mother was incapable of loving you the way you should have been loved. And I’m sorry your government took advantage of your sickness to make you into a killer.  But none of that gives you the right to hurt Napoleon this way.  I don’t care so much for me—you’ve always been a fool where I’m concerned.  But Napoleon deserves better.”

 

Only hours before, Illya had been thinking that it was Gaby who deserved better from him, and now he was being told, mystifyingly, that it was Napoleon who was suffering for Illya’s ignorance.  He couldn’t have been more confused if Gaby had delivered her judgement in Swahili.

 

He shook his head, hands falling lax and open at his sides.

 

“I don’t know what you want from me.”  He sounded desperate, and in other times he might have felt the sting of that in his pride, but right now, with Gaby’s ferocious anger sucking all the air from his lungs, he could only float adrift in a turbulent sea that he had no skills to navigate and no chance of surviving.

 

It must have been his surrender that did it.  Gaby’s fury disappeared in an instant, replaced by a look of dawning bafflement and then an awful mirth.  Her mouth was twisted in a parody of a smile as she began to shake her head repeatedly, like she was trying to drive the thought from it.

 

“You really _don’t_ know.  You don’t know how he feels about you because you can’t even tell how _you_ feel.  Oh, Illya…”

 

And then she was up on her toes, straining to brush a soft, chaste kiss against his cold lips.

 

“Find Napoleon.  And when you do, let him in.”

 

And she was gone, a flash of that ridiculous hat on his periphery before the outraged noises of a matron in the hallway brought him back to his situation—taking up most of the narrow space between sink and commode in the ladies’ room.  He fled, too flustered by Gaby’s revelations to even attempt an apology to the woman he’d startled.

 

He found Napoleon in the first place he’d looked.  He’d retreated to the high ground, where Illya himself would have gone in defense, the balcony of their suite on the twelfth floor of the hotel, overlooking the street.

 

Napoleon liked a balcony so that he could smoke there, but also, Illya thought, especially since Afghanistan, he preferred to have the open sky above him.  He didn’t do so well in dark, closed spaces anymore.

 

Napoleon wasn’t smoking then.  He had both hands on the railing and was leaning on it, looking out over the rooftops of the city.  He didn’t turn when Illya opened the French door and joined him there.

 

“You come to tell me I’m a terrible spy?” 

 

As he hadn’t been sure what to say, Illya was grateful for Napoleon’s deflection, falling back on their old routine.  Then he felt like a coward for it, though he answered, “I get tired of repeating myself.”

 

Napoleon snorted but still didn’t turn to look at Illya.

 

Illya joined him at the railing, their shoulders nearly but not quite brushing.  He wrapped his hands around the railing, feeling the cold of the metal biting into his palms.  It grounded him; metal in his hands he could understand.  The tension in the space between them, he could not.

 

“What happened to you…” he started to say, and Napoleon interrupted him brusquely, “Wasn’t my fault.  Yes, yes, yes, so you and Waverly and Gaby keep falling all over yourselves to tell me.  Frankly, it’s as tedious as the rest of the things you say.”

 

A flash of anger warmed him, and Illya flexed his hands against the railing, letting go only as he realized what he was doing.  He let out a breath, silently and slowly, and eased his hands into his pockets instead.

 

It wasn’t a comfortable posture for him—he didn’t like having his movements restricted—but he had learned that with Napoleon he sometimes had to be uncomfortable to get anything accomplished.

 

“I think if you believed us, you’d be swimming with the Miranov woman now.”

 

Napoleon snorted again, but it was a weak effort at scorn.  He shook his head but still did not look at Illya.

 

“What happened with Natalia has nothing to do with…the other thing.”

 

“Then why is Gaby doing your job for you?”

 

That got a rise out of Napoleon at last, and he pushed away from the railing to face Illya, who turned to meet him head-on.

 

“What do you want me to say?  Do you expect me to start whimpering and sobbing?  To throw myself at you for comfort?  Is that how you see this playing out—I’m finally broken enough for you that you can let yourself have me?  Is that what you want?”

 

Napoleon had closed the distance between them so that his last question was delivered with a burst a warmth over Illya’s lips, and he wanted to lick the breath away, to get a phantom taste of Napoleon’s bitterness.

 

It was his turn to shake his head.  He had no words for what he was feeling, and in his frustration, he returned to form, reaching up to bracket Napoleon’s shoulders with his hands and then turn him bodily to shove him against the French door and crowd into him until they were touching all along the front of their bodies.

 

Napoleon gasped as the air was knocked from him, and he eyes widened.  Illya noticed these things in the seconds before his mouth descended on Napoleon’s parted lips, and he at last chased his earlier impulse to taste his partner on his own tongue.

 

Vaguely, he noted that Napoleon was struggling, that he was making a noise in his throat that vibrated against Illya’s own mouth, but he merely deepened the kiss, swallowing the desperate sounds, and moved his hands from Napoleon’s shoulders to his wrists, which he gripped and pinned against the door, feeling the cold glass on his knuckles as he pressed closer, bringing his knee between his partner’s thighs and rocking a little, registering a hardness to match his own before at last, through the haze that had dropped over his mind, through the blood pounding in his ears, he recognized something else and at last tore his mouth away from Napoleon’s.

 

Napoleon’s face was a study in contrasts—lips ravaged to redness, cheeks flushed with desire, eyes white at the edges with panic and his breath bursting hoarse from his mouth in great gusts, as though Illya had tried to kill him instead of kiss him.

 

All at once Illya understood his monumental mistake.  He released Napoleon’s wrists and stepped back, hands hovering in the air between them like he wanted to reach out to steady his partner, who was weak-kneed and swaying in place, but knew his touch would be unwelcome.

 

With crushing certainty, Illya saw that he’d ruined any chance they’d ever had to be together in the exact moment that he’d finally understood that they could have been.

 

He made a noise, a sound half denial, half despair, and then Napoleon was leaning forward, one shaking hand hooking around Illya’s nape, pulling him close until Napoleon could wrap both arms around Illya and press his lips to Illya’s throat, saying, “It’s okay.  It’s okay,” as if it were Illya who had been violated, Illya who needed gentling like a terrified animal.

 

With infinite care, as though Napoleon might turn to ash and crumble, Illya returned the embrace, tightening his grip only when Napoleon made a sound of approval and snugged himself in closer.

 

He felt Napoleon’s lips moving along his jaw, to his cheek, to the corner of his mouth, and then felt those lips moving, soft and certain, against his own, felt Napoleon lick his way inside of him, felt him deepen the kiss and moan, and he forgot to be careful then as need roared through him.

 

They must have fumbled their way back into the suite, must have toed off their shoes, shed their clothes, abandoned all thoughts of the bedroom in favor of the spacious couch.  Must have, at some point, wrestled for place, Napoleon ending up on top, rocking in the cradle of Illya’s spread thighs, both of them gripped in Illya’s hand, movements eased by the evidence of their mutual desire.

 

Must have gasped one another’s names as the motion grew frantic.

 

Must have clung to each other with greedy fingers as their pleasure built and then spilled almost together, heady scent of spend and sweat filling the heated space between them.

 

Might, even, have made promises in soft murmurs between broken breaths as Napoleon settled with a lazy, wicked grin, into the space between Illya’s broad shoulders and the back of the couch.

 

As he lay there, Napoleon dragging lazy fingers through the mess on his stomach, Illya realized that for the long moments of their passion he had not felt the anger banked like a kiln fire in the smoldering pit of his stomach.  He hadn’t experienced an iota of confusion or uncertainty, hadn’t suffered the frustration of not understanding what Napoleon wanted or what he himself could give.

 

He tightened his arms around Napoleon, drawing him closer for a sustained and sustaining kiss, and as they parted, a little breathless, laughing a little too, he whispered his love against Napoleon’s temple and looked down into his partner’s face to see a new smile, one Illya had never seen before:  sincere and sweet, conveying the last lesson Illya needed to learn: freedom from anger and peace of mind and an impossible, completely real love.

 

**_Now that we're all such good friends they've kindly agreed to let me keep  
the team together for a while._ **

 

Gaby was insufferably smug for weeks after the night Illya and Napoleon reached their moment of revelation, though not nearly as smug as Napoleon, who kept taking the opportunity to sneak gropes under the table at restaurants or in the shadows of an alley while they were following someone or in the car on long stakeouts.

 

“You are doing this on purpose,” Illya panted after one such tussle, while he tried to will away his erection and keep an eye on the mark, who was dining on the patio of a restaurant down the block from their parked car.

 

“Of course I am,” Napoleon answered, utterly shameless.  “My purpose seems entirely clear.  Should I explain it in detail?”  His voice dipped low and his lips quirked in a wicked, daring smile.

 

“While I’m as much a voyeur as the next healthy single girl, I’d appreciate it if you two could behave a little more professionally.  If I have to listen to much more of this, you’re going to have to start stocking more liquor for me.”  Gaby’s voice came to them through a shared radio link.

 

“Now who’s unprofessional,” Illya muttered, though he was smiling as he said it.

 

They had fallen into a surprisingly easy rhythm together.  Napoleon had returned to seducing gorgeous women when the need arose, Gaby to playing the long-suffering girlfriend or spouse, Illya to lurking and lying in wait.

 

At night, when they could, Illya and Napoleon shared a room, though to all outward appearances they were still two straight men and their plucky young cousin, or sister, or, in at least one curiously unlikely cover, niece.

 

Their covers changed with their missions, and they sometimes slept in separate beds or rooms or buildings—twice in separate countries, an uncomfortable necessity that Illya had hated—but mostly they were Gaby and Napoleon and Illya, and it worked.

 

Waverly only once, obliquely, remarked on the shift in dynamics, saying, “I wonder that you manage to get your work done when you’re so…companionable,” and that was all from the home office on the subject.

 

Sometimes, Illya would wake from a sound sleep in a sudden panic that nothing this good could ever last, and Napoleon’s slow, sleeping breath would lull him out of his fear until he, too, could rest once more.

 

Sometimes it was Napoleon who woke in the night, cold sweat on his skin, faint tremor in his hands, and it was Illya’s turn to be the real and solid presence upon which his lover could ground himself.

 

Once in a while, Gaby sought them out, burrowed between them, wordlessly taking shelter from the terrors that plagued her in the night.

 

But ever and always they were a team: inevitable, ineluctable, whole. 

**Author's Note:**

> The lovely and talented adaemmait has translated "Lessons" into Chinese.   
> The story can be found here: http://archiveofourown.org/works/8006464


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